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The HIBAR Research Alliance

Expanding Highly Integrative Basic And Responsive Research To Accelerate Service To Society

Academic Incentive Systems

Modernizing scholarship for the public good

Modernizing scholarship for the public good

An action framework for public research universities​​

June 2024

The problems facing communities, regions, countries, and the globe are increasingly multifaceted and complex – challenging public research universities to expand and renew how they deliver on their missions for a new era.  In response to these challenges, the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) launched the Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good initiative, with a goal of spurring more publicly engaged and impactful research.

This initiative culminated in an extensive action framework that offers guidance to public research universities on ways that they can support scholars and advance publicly engaged and impactful research, with special attention to the ways that diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice are integral to this work.

In 2021, Dr. Elyse Aurbach was named a Civic Science Fellow, co-hosted by APLU and the University of Michigan’s Office of the Vice President for Research, to lead this multi-institutional project. In this webinar, she described the framework and highlighted institutional examples from universities that have successfully taken such action, focusing on strategic actions that institutions can take to encourage and enable more Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive (HIBAR) projects.

Here are several key links that Dr. Aurbach shared during the presentation:

Key Takeaway Messages

There are no “one size fits all” strategies that will enable organizational change at all universities.

Significant and sustained change requires a lot of time and/or resources.

Organizational culture eats policy, procedure, and practice for lunch.

Look for opportunities to lay the groundwork for future change efforts.

Our collective progress is hindered by the lack of shared terminology about impactful, engaged research.

Institutional change efforts are most effective when they include meaningful assessment tools.

Meaningful, sustained change is often a result of a long-term, deliberative process.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

Watch the full webinar recording

Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speaker

Elyse Aurbach

University of Michigan

Elyse Aurbach is Director for Public Engagement & Research Impacts in the University of Michigan’s Office of Research. In this role, Dr. Aurbach develops strategy and oversees a team to support university faculty in their public engagement efforts. She previously served as Public Engagement Lead with the Center for Academic Innovation, overseeing the center’s role in a Presidential strategic focus area on faculty public engagement, and pursued a double-life as a scientist studying the neurobiological underpinnings of major depression and leading a number of projects to improve science communication and public engagement.

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Broadening Faculty Reward Systems to Support Societally-Impactful Research

Broadening Faculty Reward Systems to Support Societally-Impactful Research

A landscape scan of promising steps taken by universities

December 2023

Academic reward systems often evaluate a faculty member’s scholarly impact primarily using citation counts and publication metrics, and fail to sufficiently recognize their contributions that impact society, for example through policy outcomes, community development, and technological innovation. There is increasing awareness of the need to adjust the incentive system to better reward societally-impactful research, and that doing so may help universities retain talented faculty, deepen public trust, and increase the impact of their research on issues of global and local significance.

Participants in the Transforming Evidence Funders Network (TEFN), facilitated by The Pew Charitable Trusts, recently commissioned a landscape scan of promising reforms to faculty reward systems. This scan draws upon and analyzes insights from 13 universities and 10 organizations in the United States to illustrate the extent and variety of initiatives underway to enhance recognition of societally-impactful scholarship. It also highlights opportunities for funders to accelerate and sustain these efforts.

You can download a copy of the landscape scan report here.

Webinar speakers Emily Ozer and Jennifer Renick, two co-authors of the report, described some of the promising approaches revealed by the scan, lessons learned from their own efforts to promote and achieve institutional changes, and some of the many opportunities to accelerate this work.

Key Takeaway Messages

Funders can accelerate universities’ efforts to broaden faculty reward systems.

It is important to evaluate the impact of institutional change efforts.

Institutional change efforts can be greatly accelerated through sharing across peer networks.

Faculty often identify their research as “societally impactful” when inclusive definitions are used.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

Watch the full webinar recording

Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speakers

Dr. Emily Ozer

University of California Berkeley

Emily J. Ozer is a psychologist and Professor of Community Health Sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the UC-Berkeley Faculty Liaison to the EVCP (Executive VC/Provost) on Public Scholarship and Engagement. Her research focuses on promoting the healthy development and empowerment of adolescents, bridging participatory research approaches and prevention science in school-based interventions.

Jennifer Renick

Dr. Jennifer Renick

University of Memphis

Jennifer Renick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology & Research at the University of Memphis. Her community-engaged research focuses on the intersection of community, developmental, and educational psychology, specifically on how to improve school climate and connection for historically underserved adolescents.

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Supporting Inclusive Recognition of Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Supporting Inclusive Recognition of Innovation & Entrepreneurship

An overview of the Promotion & Tenure – Innovation & Entrepreneurship (PTIE) effort

November 2023

Universities today can, and should, enable greater contributions toward solving society’s critical problems while also boosting academic excellence. To do so, universities must ensure that promotion and tenure processes fairly assess and value entrepreneurial, innovative endeavors that can produce the kind of societal impacts that universities are increasingly being called on to provide.

Oregon State University, with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, facilitated a national conversation on how to inclusively recognize innovation & entrepreneurship impact by university faculty in promotion, tenure, and advancement guidelines and practices. This led to the creation of the Promotion & Tenure Innovation & Entrepreneurship (PTIE) effort, which now involves more than 65 U.S. institutions and numerous national stakeholder organizations. This work has resulted in a comprehensive set of recommendations for promotion and tenure reform.

Webinar speakers Rich Carter and Almesha Campbell described the networked-systems approach PTIE has taken to develop a nationwide coalition. They shared how universities can use the resulting framework to better align the intellectual capabilities of their faculty with an innovation economy, and how the strategy can be broadly applicable, beyond innovation and entrepreneurship, to recognize the many and evolving dimensions along which faculty create societal impacts.

Key Takeaway Messages

Promotion and tenure reform requires champions at all levels.

Through networks, proponents of change efforts gain access to credible external champions.

There is a considerable appetite for broadening incentive systems to support societally-impactful research.

The intent of promotion reform is to remove a disconnect by rewarding faculty for efforts that the university already values.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

Watch the full webinar recording

Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speakers

Dr. Rich Carter

Oregon State University

Rich Carter is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Faculty Lead for Innovation Excellence in the Office of Research at Oregon State University. He is the Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded program that led to the creation of the PTIE effort.

Dr. Almesha Campbell

Jackson State University

Almesha Campbell is the Assistant Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Jackson State University (JSU). For over 10 years, she served as the Director for Technology Transfer and Commercialization at JSU and continues to manage the intellectual property process from triage of invention disclosures to commercialization.

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Aligning Open Science with Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

Aligning Open Science with Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

The University of Maryland’s Department of Psychology Leads the Way

October 2023

It has long been recognized that transparent and accessible knowledge enhances scientific integrity and enables greater participation by collaborators outside of academia. However, promotion and tenure guidelines often do not reward open science practices, which often prevents faculty members from pursuing research projects for the public good.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Psychology tackled this problem and, in April 2022, adopted new guidelines that explicitly codify open science as a core criteria in tenure and promotion review. The successful adoption of this new policy presents an opportunity to push for enduring systemic change, to ensure that incentives for advancement reflect the values of faculty members and their institutions.

As Department Chair, webinar speaker Michael Dougherty championed this change and led a multi-year effort to develop and implement the new policy. He was committed to rewarding work that was made broadly available without barriers, but he recognized it would be a culture change that required time. During this webinar, he described the approach that was taken to develop and adopt the new policy, aimed at empowering faculty members to do research in the way that they want to do it, and on the topics that energize them. 

Key Takeaway Messages

Administrators can accelerate change efforts by signaling their support, loudly and often.

Administrators are very often open to new ways of doing things.

Faculty members want to do the right thing, but often struggle to do so.

Many faculty members are excited to pursue new cross-sectoral collaborative project.

It can be difficult to imagine a different promotion and tenure system.

Intentionality and persistence are essential for successful change efforts.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

Watch the full webinar recording

Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speaker

Michael Dougherty

University of Maryland

Michael Dougherty is Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research and administrative efforts have been driven by a commitment to the view that basic research ought to be guided by real-world problems.

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An Institutional Change Project

An Institutional Change Project

Building the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) network to catalyze lasting change

February 2021

Prof. Jerry Davis and Prof. Anne Tsui shared their experience in building the Responsible Research in Business and Management network (RRBM), a global grassroots movement led by 24 senior scholars aiming to change the ecosystem of business research to be more useful to society. RRBM’s mission is to solve two main problems: (1) questionable research practices that threaten the credibility of scientific findings and (2) the disconnect between researchers’ priorities (publications, citations, careers) and the needs of the communities of practice (credible knowledge to inform and improve practice).

The webinar focused on concrete actions and projects initiated along the way to catalyze key stakeholders — journal editors, academic association leaders, deans and vice deans, senior scholars, and accreditation agency leaders — to take small but meaningful actions as part of a broader ecosystem change. They reported some small wins and lessons they have learned so far from attempting to change an entrenched and deeply engrained research ecosystem that has dominated business research practices in the past.

Key Takeaway Messages

The research ecosystem is highly interconnected and self-reinforcing.

It takes collective action to change an ecosystem.

Recruit allies who really care about the problem.

You can’t solve every problem at once.

Small wins add up if you are persistent.

Read the key takeaway messages from all of our webinars here.

Watch the full webinar recording

Watch key excerpts from the webinar

Webinar Speakers

Dr. Jerry Davis

Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Sociology

University of Michigan

Dr. Anne Tsui

Motorola Professor of International
Management Emerita, Arizona State University

Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Management, University of Notre Dame

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